Woodland Wreath Decoration

Hello there :)

On the run up to Christmas my brain starts buzzing with ideas for gifts and decor projects I'd like to make but as always, most never see the light of day!! I have, however, followed through with one for today's project.... I've used the new Woodland Basics dies from Wplus9 to make a wreath decoration for the Christmas tree....

The dies are fabulous as they're able to span from Autumn into Winter and I wanted to try something seasonal using material scraps. I started by cutting a wreath shape in brown felt with a 3¼" and a 1¾" circle die and used blanket stitch to join them together on the inner seam first.

I added small rolls of cotton wool as stuffing for a more rounded look, before blanket stitching around the outside edge. The leaves are cut from scraps of material that are backed with interfacing (left over from another project) the dies did require a few passes through the Bigshot with a cardboard shim to make a clean cut. The cone is part material and part patterned paper for the contrast in colours... the dark paper overlay also helped to stiffen the fabric. The berries are cut from red felt and are backed with a small piece of white card.

I drew in some faint woodgrain on the wreath with a pen and attached the foliage using hot glue.... I'm quite pleased how it turned out and will definitely make more and use the bird instead of the cone on some :)

If you don't fancy sewing, you can always make your wreath flat and sandwich a piece of card between the layers to help stiffen the circle, this would be a great activity to use with fun foam or felt for Children to make on the run up to Christmas.

                                                                                            

Thanks for stopping by :)
Jenny x

Dog-gone awesome

Hello.

With all of the new Avery Elle release in store I thought I would revisit an older stamp set.

I have used the furry friends stamp set. 

I love these cute images.

The puppy is stamped in black  momento ink and coloured with copics before being fussy cut.

I thought the bed would be perfect to use with the seven hills felt packs.

As I don't have the matching dies I stamped onto the felt using black archival ink and again fussy cut.

I kept it all very simple and everything was put together on some patterned paper with some paw prints stamped in the same colour. 

Thanks for looking.

A DIY Travel Journal

Hello there, happy Monday to you :)

The holiday season is well and truly upon us and after my dabble into pocket scrapbooking a couple of weeks ago I thought I'd have a go at making a Travel Journal..... I was inspired by one produced by an overseas retailer who don't sell in the UK so thought I'd have a go at making one from scratch...

The three journals are quite easy to make using thin card, the finished books are 4" square and are literally four pieces of card folded in half...

There are so many different tutorials online on how to bind these books, they can be sewn or stapled... I liked the idea of punching the holes and using thread to tie the pages together. One of the books has a mixture of pages inside... I even used a sheet of vellum for something different...

I kept the embellishments simple on the front of the books and kept the same colour theme but each one is different. I used Smitty's ABC's embossed in white on black card to make the titles for each book... I like the faux label look it gives :)

I used one of the Slim Tag Trio dies with a piece of natural coloured canvas and layered a scalloped frame and globe from this paper pad.... cutting out images from patterned papers is a great way to embellish journals :)

Those cute little cameras are from a different paper pad by Echo Park and luckily they were a good match with the colour scheme :) The word die is from Paper Smooches Documented dies... they make titles so much easier.

Another useful die set is the Cardbooking dies from Paper Smooches, as the name suggests they span both cards and scrapbooking... I used the arrow and quotation marks to embellish this book. 

I'm pleased with how these little books turned out and my daughter is after them... she likes to fill journals with photos from her adventures. 

To house the books, I cut two pieces of felt at approx 10x5" along with two pieces of interfacing and a piece of Heat'n'Bond all the same size. I backed both pieces of felt with the interfacing using a warm iron and then used the heat'n'bond to stick them together. I used the wool setting, no steam, and placed an old hankerchief on top before applying the iron in a pressing motion rather than rubbing it over... oh and dont forget to protect your ironing board just in case you get any glue residue on it!

When it was all stuck together I trimmed the whole piece to 9½ x 4½" and rounded the corners. I punched holes and set eyelets for the elastic binding... the two outer holes need to be set apart the same width as your journals and one in the centre for the elastic closure. The cover should bend a little when the elastic binding is in place, this will mean your books stay snug and safe inside the cover :)

I joined the first and third book together with a separate loop of elastic and then threaded them under the longest piece of binding in the cover, then I slipped the second book in place under the the longest binding too... hope you can see that in the bottom left photo above :)

Here are the links to the products I used

           

            

                             

Apologies for such a long post with lots of photos but hopefully they convey how I made the journal. 

It was such a fun project to make and I think they make a great gift idea for family holiday snaps or the intrepid traveller alike :)

Thanks for stopping by

Jenny x

Touchy-Felty

Hi crafters! Today I’m getting touchy-felty with you! I have never before used felt on my projects, mainly because it was so hard to find a good felt for die-cutting. A good felt is one that can be easily cut, retains that shape, and doesn’t go all fussy on me after handling it. Seven Hills Crafts in the UK are now stocking felt that is perfect and I’ll show you today just how intricate you can go with it.

Because I had to know for myself what I could put this felt through, I grabbed a pretty intricate die set from My Favorite Things – as you can see the petals of those Gerberas are pretty thin and I wondered if the felt could handle that. In a rare occasion of foresight I even added some double-sided adhesive to the felt before die-cutting it so it would be easier to adhere one layer on top of the others later. It cuts like butter (I did it on my Grand Calibur), and you can remove it easily from the die itself. Through the pressure in the die-cutting machine, the adhesive really sticks to the felt so it’s easy to adhere it to another surface.

For some finishing touches, I added some silver beads to the center of my flower using Glossy accents, and then added sparkly dots with my Stardust Gel pen on top of the felt! Worked like a charm! The sentiment is from Paper Smooches – they have some fantastic sentiment sets which are perfect for all occasions.

Thank you for stopping by today! I hope you got inspired!

Delightful Greetings	Gerbera Daisy Die-namic	All Prettied Up - Creative Cuts	Felt Rainbow Sample Pack
Stamp Shammy SHC UK

InLinkz.com

Getting Felty

As promised last week, I am here with a few tricks and tips on using our new felt range.   I made this card for our current embossing challenge

And on it, I embossed the felt panel at the bottom.  You may think that embossing in felt wouldn't hold, but there is a handy little trick that makes it hold good and firm and it might be a little surprising.  You just need to go to an old fashioned store and pick up a can of spray starch!   Soak the  felt in the spray before putting in your embossing folder (it will squirt out - so I add a piece of kitchen roll at the end of the plates to catch the excess).

Run the plates right through with your wet felt in the embossing folder and then bring it back to the centre and leave it in the machine for 20 minutes to start to dry.  When it comes out it will still be a little damp so leave it to air dry naturally.  You can them trim it to size and secure to your project with strong tape.   Neat trick huh ;-)

I've also been making some little gifts with my felt using a new to store die from MFT which is perfect for making little lavender bags to hang in wardrobes.   The Stitchable Heart Stax Dies from MFT have little holes all the way around which makes stitching them together super easy (would be great to do with your kids)

I made two different ones - one where I just layered up the dies and one where I did a little stamping and stitched over the stamped design.  

Here I stamped one of the floral designs for Neat and Tangled's Hand Stitched (but any stamp you fancy would work) in white ink lightly so it doesn't show after stitching.

Now it's just a case of following the lines with whatever stitches you fancy - I used 3 strands of embroidery thread.  I used a french knot for the centre of each flower and then used back stitch for the other lines.  For the leaves I did a daisy stitch and more back stitch.  A simple edge stitch with 6 strands of thread stitched the two hearts together and I then filled the edges with cotton wool and the centre with dried lavender for scent (you could add a few drops of you favourite essential oil to the cotton wool too)   The pink version just used back stitch to layer up the heart die cuts before stuffing in the same way and adding ribbon to hang them both.

Now I love to embroider, but actual "sewing" is not my strong point (hence the dies with holes spoke to me!) but I received a lovely email from a customer who was very excited by our felt as she uses other brands a lot and finds ours much softer.  Susan Elwell is a VERY good seamstress and she sent me a picture of what she made which is just adorable so I said I would share it all with you all too.

Susan used dies to cut the shapes for these gorgeous needle holder and scissor sewing kits - aren't they fabulous?   If you make anything fun with our felt - do let us know so we can share it with everyone too.

NEWS FROM THE STORE

• This week we will have new summer papers and co-ordinating stencils and embellishments from Echo Park
• We will have the new release from Reverse Confetti towards the end of the week
• We will also have the new Mama Elephant on the 15th.

Slightly quieter this week as we gear up for the big releases towards the end of the month.

Get well

Hello.

I have been playing with the fabulous new felt we have in store.

I have used dies from Paper Smooches and no stamping.

I have kept the design very simple to show off the felt die cuts.

I have used the hickory leaf die with green felt and the used big blooms in white and yellow felt.

I simple used some fabric glue a bit like pva to adhere them together and to the card panel.

The panel has some distress ink to make the white flower show up more.

I have used the get well die and had coloured the card with distress ink and perfect pearls.

To finish i added a button from my stash and some enamel dots.

The felt cuts beautifully first time and makes a nice change from paper.

 

Thanks for looking.